In 1975 the NDR established its own festival to provide the then so-called “New Jazz” with a home base in the Hanseatic City of Hamburg, which was suffering slightly under the omnipresent and highly respected swing- and Dixieland traditionalists, who provided a cosy but hardly innovative version of jazz. As a second venue of the “New Jazz” festival “Onkel P?” was selected – the club which had established itself as a new home of jazz in Hamburg. Also for the club the festival meant a substantial boost. Part of the 1975 festival programme was a band founded by Liebman and Beirach some two years previously under the enigmatically beautiful name “Lookout Farm”. The first and universally acclaimed record was released on the German label ECM. Liebman, Beirach as well as bassist Frank Tusa and percussionist Jeff Williams were undoubtedly at the centre of this vehement awakening of a newly liberated music; ostentatiously, at the Hamburg festival concert the quartet invoked themes and motives by John Coltrane, back then the visionary leader of everything new in the world of jazz
